


The Light of Your Name on My Skin

by ryulabird



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Dimension Travel, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Middle Earth, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, World Travel, idiots are driving the plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-02-27 22:03:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13257513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryulabird/pseuds/ryulabird
Summary: Harry wakes up in a new world, with a strange mark on his arm. He learns that every person in this world has a soulmate and the mark on his arm is the name of his own soulmate. As if trees that ate people weren’t weird enough.Meanwhile, across Arda, Haldir of Lothlórien has been waiting for a name to appear on his skin for so long that he has begun to dread it. Then one night, a name does appear, unreadable and absolutely the worst thing to ever happen to him.Neither of them are at all happy to have a soulmate.





	The Light of Your Name on My Skin

**Author's Note:**

> Welp, it's finally happened. I finally fleshed out enough of one of those snippets I had to justify making its own story. Never thought it would be this one honestly. Like, this one has no plan, I have no idea where it's going. Harry and Haldir are both resolutely attempting to march away from each other and...somehow that's working??? Like it's actually getting them closer to meeting? I have no idea what's going to happen if they actually do meet...
> 
> Anyway-- I re-wrote some parts so it should be different from what you can find in 'Bewitched' and everything should make more sense, be edited better. All that jazz. 
> 
> Remember to comment so I know you guys are just as crazy for this nonsense as I am~~! And yes...there will be so many cliffhangers!

* * *

  


When Harry woke up, he was cold, naked, and alone. It was the middle of the night and judging from the stars overhead, he was outside and fairly far north. It was a pretty typical rebirth, as Harry liked to call them. The whole no clothes, middle of nowhere, and in the dead of night deal were all things Harry had got used to after Merlin knows how long of dying and waking up again.

 

He was immortal, sort of. He could die still, but he couldn't stay dead, something always pushed him back out, into life again. Usually to an alternate earth, or at least that was what Harry guessed they were. Honestly sometimes it felt like he was just moving through time. But then there were worlds he found himself on where there was just no way it could ever be connected to any other earth he'd been on.

 

Like on one world dragons talked, and on another magic never existed, and another, which was very creepy, had doorways to other dimensions just all over the place. There were some odd worlds out there, and Harry generally didn't have long to get adjusted to them.

 

But this time, for once, Harry had all the time in the world. He usually woke up somewhere isolated, and wilderness situations usually gave him enough time to at least figure out where he was and what sort of people lived in the area.

 

He did find a strange mark on his arm that wouldn't come off. It looked like writing and it didn't hurt, so eventually he decided it was one of the odd things from this world and forgot about it.

 

The first week after he woke up, Harry spent working hard to make some clothes. He was lucky this world had magic - worlds without magic were always difficult. But the whole week he never found even the slightest sign of people. Then another week passed and Harry had managed to make some simple tools- a staff, a stone knife, eating utensils, the basics - and he'd collected enough food to leave the area, and he still hadn't found any signs of people.

 

Then more weeks passed, then it was fall, and winter, and by the next summer Harry was pretty well adjusted to the world, but he was beginning to doubt there were any people here at all.

 

Which would be perfect. No people, in Harry's opinion, just meant no trouble. This might be the best world he'd ever lived in.

 

The first person Harry saw in the world, was a little girl. He thought she was collecting wood to burn, later he would find out she'd been collecting bark to eat. But at first, he didn't think much of it.

 

When she saw him, she ran for it. Harry figured she must have gone toward her home and went in the opposite direction. A week later he was pulling feathers from his dinner when he heard faint screaming. He shouldn't have gone toward it, but he thought of that little girl, and before he could stop himself he was running for the sound.

 

That day, he drove a couple of thin, ragged wolves away from a sheep they'd taken down. Two men and four children who corralled the rest of their sheep away, came back to thank him. They also came back for the sheep - since it was dead already, they could eat it, and it fed a lot of people.

 

Harry world have left normally, but when they tried to thank him, they all found out he didn't speak their language. It was hard enough living in a world you didn't understand, but not knowing what anyone was saying definitely made things worse. Harry decided he would stick around just long enough to pick up whatever the local language was called, and then he would head back out to the wild.

 

It had taken almost three years after all, before he ran into this village. Harry had really enjoyed those three years being alone as he traveled, even if he got chased by giant wolves more than he would have liked. It was still better than being chased by people. Once he’d learned the language he could probably pick a direction and spend another few years blissfully alone again, and next time he could apologize to whoever he met and walk away. That usually helped keep people from coming after him, being polite just made people forget you.

 

So he started bringing the villagers things - deer when he could, but mostly rabbits, which wasn’t a favorite apparently, but no one turned it down. He also brought random plants he thought might be edible, but he didn’t know if any of them ever were and hadn’t wanted to try himself. Who knew, maybe some of the plants were medicinal and just as appreciated as the food, since no ever turned those down either.

 

The villagers were wary at first, but rumors of his actions with the wolves spread fast, and everyone loved getting free food. Especially when they were starving, which Harry found out quite quickly. No one was that desperate for raw meat if they were eating well.

 

The rabbits and deer and such he managed to bring back were probably the only reason most people survived, and yet they still refused to enter the woods and hills themselves. Harry figured it had something to do with the number of trees he’d come across that tried to swallow him.

 

Or the wolves, they were out on the open hills, waiting for a chance at the sheep. Harry had to help drive them away more than once.

 

In exchange, several families invited him in and talked with him, trying to teach him words so he could respond. It was a nice effort, if ineffective, but usually the adults had work to do, trying to repair tools and clothes, and guarding the sheep. So, once he was more trusted as just the odd man from the hills who brought everyone snacks, he was left alone with the children as a sort of minder. They just talked to him, pointing things out and trying to express meaning with their whole bodies, and generally speaking as if he could already understand them. After a month or two, Harry very nearly could, and after three he was fluent enough the adults spoke to him normally too.

 

Harry sort of saved the little village he learned was called Hamangul, and the people made sure he knew they were grateful. So grateful in fact, that eventually a few of them took him aside to talk about the writing scrawled on his arm.

 

The strange letters tattooed on the inside of Harry’s left arm when he woke up in this world were indeed one of the ‘weird’ aspects of this world. It turned out everyone had tattoos in exactly the same place. At least everyone that wasn’t a child had them, and when it was explained to him what the marks were, that was kind of a relief.

 

Apparently, every person in this world had a soulmate, and the name of their other half would appear on each pair’s arm when the youngest turned seventeen. As if trees that ate people weren’t weird enough. Soulmates. _Honestly._

 

In any case, when people started talking to Harry about the marks, it wasn’t actually to explain them-- everyone knew what the marks were, so they all assumed Harry knew already too. No, what they wanted to help him with, was figuring out what _language_ the name on his arm was written in. Because when he first turned up, they had all thought he was searching for his soulmate-- not knowing the language it was in, not knowing the language of the land he was in, everyone thought he was from somewhere very distant, and he’d left his home trying to find his foreign soulmate.

 

He wasn’t, he really, _really_ wasn’t, but it was obvious having a soulmate was pretty important and not being born near your own was rare. So once the villagers felt indebted to Harry, they decided to help him figure out which way he should go to find whoever’s name was on his arm.

 

“It’s not that we don’t want you to stay with us,” Ballard, one of the many shepherds who’d lost sheep to wolves before Harry drove them away, told him one day. “Just, if you’re looking for your soulmate, we shouldn’t keep you.” The man shrugged and gave Harry a faint grin. “You’ve done a lot for us, it’d be a blessing if you could find your other half soon!”

 

Harry got similar talks from just about everyone in the village as he passed through on errands. Farmers and shepherds coming in from fields as the sun set called out to him and told him how glad they were he’d stayed to help, but how he really ought to get on with his journey. Finding his soulmate was surely more important than stopping so long for their sake.

 

Then something terrible happened. Farold, a farmer whose family had depended on the rabbits Harry brought for them, took him aside. At the time, Harry mostly just wished he hadn’t done so with his wife and five children surrounding them as backup.

 

“We’ve got a clue for you!” Farold told him excitedly. His younger children hung off Harry’s arms, watching him with wide grins, while Dora stood laughing behind him with their older children, one a son who had recently returned from a trip east. “That writing-- Gil’s said he’s seen some of it!”

 

“There’s a town of sorts,” Gil explained at his mother’s prodding, “at the ruins of the Old Kings. Some o’them got writing like yours on them. All over the walls, carved in! I asked one of the rangers, and he said it was the language they used when the kingdom was first founded. Elvish!”

 

Harry was supposed to know what that meant, he could tell from the way everyone was watching him expectantly. He really didn’t want to find whatever poor sod had the misfortune to be tied to him. Dora was nodding at him, and the kids had gone quiet, waiting for his reaction.

 

“Oh, that’s so...great!” Harry stretched his mouth into a grin and hoped it was convincing. The kids started laughing happily, and Farold gave his eldest son a proud pat.

 

News spread through the village fast, and before Harry knew it, they’d organized a party to celebrate his continuing search. He enjoyed the food and dancing, but decided it was probably a good thing he had an excuse to leave. Considering how sure everyone was that he’d rather be traveling to find some soulmate, he figured it would be a good excuse anytime he hung around other people too long. Or maybe, he could just travel wherever he wanted, and anytime people got curious about him, he could just point to his marks, say he was searching for his soulmate, and leave. After all, if the writing on his arm was from some “ancient” script, then his soulmate probably didn’t even exist. It made sense really-- he wasn’t from this world, so any weird connection the world made for him was sure to be messed up.

 

That would actually be really great. If soulmates were so important that they could be the reason people would leave him alone when Harry wanted them to, and he didn’t actually have one, it would be better than great. It would be perfect.

 

So Harry finally left the woods and the village, and traveled along the path Gil had shown him, heading for some town he hadn’t gotten the name of and who knew what else. He would tell people he was looking for his soulmate, and everyone would leave him alone. Perfect.

  
\-----------------------  


It happened late on a night in midsummer. Haldir and his troop had just returned to their camp at Nimrodel, and he and his brothers decided to bathe along the river’s banks before retiring. If not for that, he may not have realized what had changed until he returned home. Instead, Rúmil was watching at the very moment soft light shone out then faded into black lettering on his long empty arm.

 

For many, the appearance of one’s Gal’gwedherde on their arm was a joyful occurrence, and had Haldir’s marks appeared in the era when his brothers’ had, or any other’s in Lórien had, then it would be so for him as well. But the more years had passed for him and no name had appeared on his skin, the more clear it was that his bonded was fated to be one of the Apanónar rather than one of his own people.

 

For some centuries, his brothers teased that his gwedherde may turn out to be a dwarf. After so long though, he no longer knew whether that would truly be worse. At least dwarves were long lived.

 

But when the Third Age started, and still there was no name branded with light and with ink across his arm, his family and his people began to look at him with pity. It was almost certain now that his soul bonded would be one of the short lived people of Middle Earth-- one of Man’s race. He dreaded ever seeing a name appear, and took to wearing long, tight sleeves to hide his arm both by day and by night.

 

So it was naturally Ilúvatar’s will that a name would finally appear when he was bathing, and with his brothers to witness it. He had thought, given the pity he saw in their’s and everyone’s eyes, that his brothers understood his dread. Yet they still acted as though the name’s appearance-- in peculiar, unrecognizable script-- should be something to rejoice.

 

Haldir never even had the chance to hide it, to pretend it had never happened. No, Rúmil called to Orophin to come see the name on Haldir’s arm, and beloved, foolish Orophin called to their fellows setting up camp in the flets on the bank. News of the last of Lothlórien’s people finally learning the name of their soul bonded spread fast, even Lord Celeborn and Lady Galadriel summoned him for congratulations.

 

Haldir silently scoffed at them all, even his gracious Lady. He could not even read the gibberish on his arm-- he had learned nothing! Except perhaps that his gwedherde was likely some barbarian he could spend decades searching for and never find-- and likely would die before they ever met.

 

Orophin found Haldir hiding alone in one of the inner flets. He had enough of everyone seeking him out to offer their congratulations. He had enough of pretending to be as happy as everyone expected him to be.

 

He wished his brothers, if no one else, could understand.

 

“Haldir?” Orophin smiled to see him. “So this is where you've been hiding! Mother has been asking, she wants to give you something, and Rúmil and I wanted to treat you to celebrate--”

 

“We already celebrated,” Haldir interrupted quickly. “And if mother has another keepsake she hopes my bonded would like to receive from me, I don't need it.”

 

Orophin blinked at him in shock, falling silent for perhaps the first time since Haldir's Gal’gwedherde had appeared three weeks ago. But he certainly didn't stay quiet for long.

 

“What is the matter with you?” he asked angrily. “Everyone is so happy for you, you've been waiting to find out your bonded’s name for centuries! Why are you acting like you've been cursed?”

 

“Haven't I?” Haldir sneered. “After so many years, this is what I get? One of the sickly race, who will die nearly as soon as we meet?”

 

“You can't be sure of that!” Orophin said, hands clenched as though he'd been insulted.

 

“What, that a child of man has a short life?” Haldir scoffed.

 

“No! That your Gal’gwedherde is of a Man's name!”

 

Haldir stared at his brother, honestly surprised. Then he laughed.

 

“Are you joking?” Haldir bit off the laugh with a click off his teeth and reached for his sleeve. While Orophin was still watching him in confusion, Haldir stepped over to him and shoved his bare arm before his brother's face. “Tell me, muindor, can you read this?”

 

Orophin’s soft face was pinched with confusion and an edge of frustration. He glanced at the writing, so jagged and messy, on his brother's arm and shook his head uncertainty.

 

“Neither can I,” Haldir said softly. “Nor can any in Lórien, not even Lord Celeborn. Do you really think this can be the name of anyone other than one of Man's race?”

 

Orophin’s face twisted with pain, and Haldir regretted being so harsh with him. But he really had had enough of pretending that everything would be alright, and he was truly sick of everyone acting like it would.

 

“So you aren't happy,” Orophin said quietly.

 

Haldir covered his arm again and turned away. “No. I am not.”

 

“I'm sorry.”

 

Haldir looked over his shoulder to find Orophin near tears.

 

“There is no reason for you to--” he tried to say.

 

“We all promised,” Orophin said with a watery sniff. “When we were children, we promised we would be kind to each other's gwedherde.”

 

Haldir felt his heart twist with guilt. He had forgotten - not to be kind to his brothers' bonded, he loved them nearly as dear as his brothers themselves - but he had forgotten that they too had promised, and might still wish to welcome his own gwedherde as eagerly as he had theirs.

 

“We promised they would be family,” Orophin said as his tears began to fall.

 

“And so they shall,” Haldir said weakly, wishing he had kept his mouth shut and his ill feelings hidden.

 

“But not for long.” Orophin looked up at him with the most tragic expression. “I'm so sorry, Haldir. I was just so happy -I-I thought our family would be complete.”

 

Haldir sighed and gestured for Orophin to come closer and pulled his brother into a tight hug.

 

“I did as well,” he said softly, petting his brother's hair to try and calm him, just as when they were young.

 

Nothing about his Gal’gwedherde appearing was good, but Haldir wished more than anything that he had continued pretending it was. So that was what he tried to do, well aware his brothers watched him now with worry, but hoping he was at least fooling everyone else.

 

Then the Lady Galadriel asked to meet with him alone.

 

“You are not happy with this, are you?” she asked him simply. She gave him a knowing glance, and Haldir realized she must have called him here because she saw what he felt every time someone congratulated him for the new name upon his skin.

 

“You fear loss,” Galadriel continued in the silence. She shown resplendent in her garden as they walked together, and Haldir felt ashamed. He certainly hadn’t been able to hide from everyone. But how could he possibly _not_ fear the loss of his gwedherde? Especially when his loss was so much more certain than anyone else's!

 

“None of our people have ever been bonded to one of the second born, my Lady,” Haldir said, and if it held an edge of sulkiness, surely even she couldn’t blame him for that.

 

“That is not true,” she said and turned to him. They stopped below a flowering tree, petals floating down around them. “There have been many elves bonded to dwarves, and to men, in the past. Once it was even expected, if one’s Gal’gwedherde had not appeared for three centuries at least. But now, with so few new born, with our power fading, you are one of the last who would be tied to a mortal.”

 

“Why?” Haldir did _not_ whine. He also did not ask where these elves with mortal bonded had gone that he had never heard of them-- for with the death of their gwedherde, there was only one place they could recover from such pain.

 

“Because it is your fate, decided by Ilúvatar, which you well know.” Lady Galadriel looked on him, not quite pitying, but something heartbreakingly close. “You must search for them, Haldir. You must search, even if it will bring you pain, because it will haunt you forever if you do not.”

 

There it was, the truth Haldir had been trying to ignore, the words everyone else in Lothlórien had avoided saying in his presence. But the truth it was, and ultimately, unavoidable.

 

“This will always be your home, to welcome you whenever you need,” Lady Galadriel said gently. Haldir nodded stiffly and did not look up at her, could not, for he knew that now there would be pity in her eyes, and he could not bear it.

 

He left, almost as soon as he left his Lady’s side, for he could not bear to leave if all he loved gathered together one last time to wish him luck on his journey. He was almost more afraid of finding the person whose name he bore, but his Lady was right-- he would regret it for the rest of his life if he did not at least try.

 

He only hoped that his choice would not destroy him.

 


End file.
